Voice Recognition Devices

Voice recognition or speech recognition devices is the translation of spoken words into text. It is also known as “Automatic Speech Recognition”, “Speech to Text” or “STT”. Voice recognition programs do not actually understand speech; they only recognize a vocabulary of pre-programmed words.

Voice recognition is commonly used to operate a device, perform commands, or write without having to operate a keyboard, mouse, or press any buttons. They are often used to also detect from the wave lengths that a specific voice is speaking the words, like the driver of the car.

The term voice recognition refers to finding the identity of “who” is speaking, rather than what they are saying. It can be used to authenticate or verify the identity of a speaker as part of a security process.

Mobile devices are seen as ideal platform for using voice recognition- mainly because, when you’re using your smart phone, you can use your hands to do other things. Although smart phone processor power has advanced significantly, voice recognition still requires a great deal of heavy lifting and therefore Apple has chosen to use cloud technologies to offload to servers to do most of the processing.

The US military and several aerospace companies are researching the use of speech recognition to control an aircraft. In theory, this will be faster than using a joystick or wheel.

Types of Voice Recognition Systems

Speaker Dependent System - The voice recognition must be trained before it can be used. This often requires a user, who reads a series of words and phrases so the computer can understand the user’s voice.

Speaker Independent System – The voice recognition software recognizes most users’ voices with no training.

Discrete Speech Recognition – The user must pause between each word so that the speech recognition can identify each separate word.

Continuous Speech Recognition – The voice recognition can understand a normal rate of speaking.

Natural Language – The speech recognition not only can understand the voice but also return answers to questions or other queries that are being asked.

Benefits

Reduce Costs and Improve Efficiency

When voice technology is used for order picking procedures for example, there is no need to print paper picking lists because these lists are verbally communicated to the worker. Voice applications have proven to greatly reduce supply and labor costs by saving paper and reducing steps in various procedures.

Improves Warehouse Safety

When works are using voice technology there are not required to spend nearly as much time looking at and handling mobile devices. The “hands free and eyes free” operation provided by voice applications leads to less waste paper or label backing sheets, resulting in a cleaner and safer ware house.

Reduce training Procedures

New warehouse order pickers have found that voice directed tasks that are easier to learn and follow than interpreting a paper task. Training time is significantly reduced, and workers are able to adapt to new tasks quicker providing additional cost savings and ROI for voice technology.

Receive Fast ROI

Voice technology provides a realistic and fast ROI. When speech recognition is used for order picking for example, companies operating more than one picking shift will spread the cost out across all shifts and see a ROI of less than 6 months on average. Companies operating a single picking shift will see an ROI of approximately 1 year.

When speech recognition is implemented properly companies will obtain a valuable ROI from their voice recognition technology solution.

Disadvantages

• Error rate is considerably high.
• Recognition of words is slow.
• Words sounding similar cannot be differentiated.
• The system is not suitable for use in noisy places.
• The software must be trained to recognize technical words.
• Many people find it difficult to speak in a ‘writing’ style.

Because of their limitations and high cost, voice recognition systems have traditionally been used only in a few specialized situations. For example, such systems are useful in instances when the user is unable to use a key board to enter data because his or her hands are occupied or disables. Instead of typing commands, the user can simply speak into a headset. Increasingly, however, as the cost decreases and performance improves, speech recognition systems are entering the mainstream and are being used as an alternative to keyboards.

Voice recognition or voice activated applications have become buzzing concept in recent years. The idea that a person is able to speak into a microphone attached to a computing device and those words typed out used to be the stuff of science fiction and part of “Iron Man”, is now REALITY.

Small Scratch on FDI Debate !!!

Foreign Direct Investment is a direct investment into production or business in a country by an individual or a company of another country.

There is a rapid growth of population in developing countries after the Second World War. This increase in the population growth also has increased in gross domestic product, and thus income per capita has increased in most developing countries around the world. The war affected countries with complex problems with the other countries such as Haiti,Somalia and Niger do not show much of the increase in GDP per capita.

The types of FDI are

               Inward foreign direct investment

               Outward foreign direct investment

These both result in a net FDI in flow and “stock of foreign direct investment”, which is the cumulative number for a given period. Direct investment excludes investments through purchase of shares. FDI is one example of international factor movements.

FDI would allow India to secure into India, which would increase India’s capital base significantly high. If India can attract FDI in the big picture it’s nothing but positive things. China’s important growth factor was FDI.

Foreign investment was introduced by Manmohan Singh under Foreign Exchange Management act in 1991. As of now, it has become the keen issue for his government to take the disagreement with FDI by the other parties. India did not allow overseas corporate bodies [OCB] to invest in India. India imposes a protection on equality holding by foreign investors in various sectors, current FDI limit in aviation sector is maximum 49%.

Benefits of FDI:  

• It causes a flow of money into the economy which simulates economic activity.
• Employment will increase, which in turn increases the revenue for the government.
• It will make the domestic producers to work and give a better product efficiently.
• The government of India experiencing increasing levels of FDI will have a greater impact at international summits as we have more stakeholders in it.
• Farmers will have an advantage , when the supermarkets directly contact the famers thus eliminating the middleman.

Against FDI:

• Inflation may increase slightly.
• FDI in retail will drain out the country’s share of revenue to foreign countries, which may cause negative impact on India’s economy.

• Supermarkets will establish their monopoly in the Indian market. Due to supermarkets fine tuning and higher accessibility they will be able to buy goods at lower prices and therefore will be able to sell at lower prices to consumers. This will result in closing of many small retailers.

• Improper time of allowing FDI in retail in India because of lack of infrastructure.

 Big business will monopolize their respective markets in India by destroying all small competitors, and then they will be in complete control of prices, so it will ultimately come at a cost. Also, after monopolizing, product quality will stop mattering, since all small businesses whose products competed in quality would be destroyed. Also, vegetables and fruits that will be imported from outside India will not be fresh and stale due to long distance transportation and constant refrigeration.

It is assumed that FDI will play a vital role in the core sectors as a source of capital, management, and technology in countries of transition economy. India has also opened up its economy and allowed many Multi-National Enterprises in the core sectors such as chemicals, transport, Power and Fuels.

  It is also motivated by recent political developments in India following the opening of sectors like insurance and telecommunication with increased financial gap for the private players.

Foreign firms may have technology that India has not acquired. On the other hand FDI brings those technologies to India much quicker.

Top Smart Phone Apps of 2013

2013 was a year of smart phones.  More than 100 billion mobile apps were downloaded in this year throughout the world, with revenues from apps crossing the mark of $25 billion approximately. There is an increase of 44% in downloading of mobile apps compared to 2012. 90% of total apps downloads is accounted by Android and iOS apps.

It is hard to believe the facts which state that only 15% of Indians with smart phones have downloaded an app, with the majority of the users choosing the free version.  Indians have downloaded more than 1.5 billion mobile apps in 2013, which may reach the mark of 9 billion by 2015, if the downloads of app go in the current pace.

Let’s look at the top mobile apps of the year 2013.

With the users almost equal to the number of literates around the globe, this is the most popular app in all platforms. 
People are so addicted that they need FB mobile app to keep posting everything, everywhere about them. This has also led to the discovery of new word “Selfie”. It is used by over 100 million users, and the usage on mobile platforms has witnessed a very .promising percentage compared to previous year.

It would not come under the category of exaggerating, if one tells that Google search is the universal search engine.  Hence Google search apps come as an inbuilt app on android platforms. The other mobile users also “Google” on the necessary topics. It is the second most downloaded app, where its usage is increased by 26%.

To install any applications on android OS, we need Google Play app. The default feature of this in android smart phones has made it the third top most celebrity status app. Since there is a increase in the android smart phones sale, even this app has rapid increasing figures which describes the popularity of the app.

When it is videos on the web, nothing else comes on mind rather than YouTube. Not only on the computers, on the smart phones also it has made the impact very effectively. Being next to Google in search engine position, it is able to manage to be in the top 4^th app as most required and used app.

The domination of the Google doesn’t seem to end with a couple of apps. Google maps have been the prominent navigator for most of us and we are in a position to trust it completely rather than a localite of the specific location. It has been one of the app without which your phone wouldn’t be smart enough for your convenience.

Undoubtedly the best mailing platform on computers as well as smart phones. Gmail apps on smart phones with android and iOS platforms exceed 60 million users. its usage and popularity are increasing tremendously.

Facebook owned Instagram has a users of over 30 million in the year 2013, it is buzzing across northern part of Indian. Users are moving towards instagram rather than facebook because of the more secured feeling of sharing images with family and friends. It is the most dominant app when considered the percentage of growth. The users increased rate is about 66%, viral spread of the technology among youngsters is considered to be the reason for the success of the app.

Stocks 

Stocks app was most used financial app in 2013. The wide spread of smart phones even among the financial sector users was the reason for 32% increase in the usage of the app.

If FB and Twitter are the two horses running a race for the trophy “the Social site with most users”, it would end in a photo finish. Trying to meet the user quantity as facebook, it is on the tail of the top 10 apps trying to catch others.